Retrospective: Dark Sun

Having devoted last week's Retrospective post to The Complete Psionics Handbook, my thoughts inevitably turned to 1991's Dark Sun campaign setting – a setting specifically created to provide a place for Second Edition AD&D fans to make full use of the game's new psionics rules without having to worry about the potentially adverse effects these psychic powers might have on, say, the Forgotten Realms or the World of Greyhawk. 

Designed by Timothy B. Brown and Troy Denning, Dark Sun was presented as "a world ravaged by sorcery" and "the most challenging AD&D game world yet." This new setting took inspiration from both the post-apocalyptic and Dying Earth sub-genres, with a dash of Burroughsian sword-and-planet for good measure. Dark Sun was thus a significant departure from the vanilla fantasy of traditional D&D and AD&D. This departure wasn't just in terms of its content, but also its presentation, making ample use of the dark, edgy art of Gerald Brom and Thomas Baxa, two relative newcomers to TSR's stable of artists, who, together, created an esthetic for Dark Sun that clearly differentiated it from everything the company had previously done. 

Like all of TSR's settings for Second Edition, Dark Sun was released in a large, boxed set, filled to the brim with gaming materials. The two main components of the set were 96-page softcover books. The first of these, entitled simply "Rules Booklet," presented new and altered AD&D rules for use with the setting. The second, "The Wanderer's Journal," was an in-character presentation of the "arid and bleak" world of Athas, which is "beset by political strife and monstrous abominations, where life is grim and short." Also included was a 16-page booklet, "A Little Knowledge," which consists mostly of a short story but also includes details of an adventure. The adventure proper is presented in two small 24-page, spiralbound flip books, one of which has illustrations to show players, like those in Tomb of Horrors or Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. Also included are poster maps of the city-state of Tyr and the region in which it's situated, known as the Tablelands.

Before getting on to the actual content of the boxed set, I'd like to say a little more about its presentation. Dark Sun is an impressive package. I remember when I got copy of it, being quite taken aback not only by how much was included in the set, but also by the unique format it took. This was particularly true in the case of the flipbooks, something I'd never seen previously in an AD&D product (or indeed any RPG product that I can recall). I suspect that they were intended as something of an experiment by TSR, one that carried over into most of the adventures subsequently published for the setting. I never really warmed to this format, which was in my experience quite unwieldy, which is one of the reasons I didn't buy any of those adventures. I'll get to the other reason shortly.

Athas itself is a very imaginative and engaging setting – sort of a cross between Barsoom and Zothique. As presented in "The Wanderer's Journal," the world's history is fragmentary at best. All that is certain is that present-day Athas is a shadow of its former self, its land ravaged by sorcery run amok and littered with the ruins of happier, more sophisticated times. Now, Athasian civilization is centered around scattered city-states, each ruled by an immortal sorcerer-king, who protects his subjects from the dangers of the wasteland in return for utter obedience. The sorcerer-kings also war amongst themselves, each attempting to expand his control of the Tablelands at the expense of his rivals, while various factions within and without attempt to take advantage of the situation. 

Though intended for use with AD&D 2e, Dark Sun makes many changes to the standard rules and assumptions of the game. Though all of the usual AD&D races are available, many are changed significantly, like the halflings, who are wild, feral beings reputed to engage in cannibalism. Joining them are new races, like muls (half-human/half-dwarf hybrids bred for their hardiness), half-giants, and thri-kreen. Character classes are similarly affected, with all being changed (or outright disallowed, like the paladin) in some way. Wizards, for example, must decide whether to increase their power by employing defiling magic that destroys the environment – the reason Athas is now barren – while clerics serve not gods, which don't exist in this setting, but the elemental forces of nature. 

Psionics also play a major role in Athas, with psionicists being common throughout the setting's population. Most intelligent beings – and many unintelligent ones, like monsters – are able to wield the powers of the mind. Psionics is, in many ways, more important in Dark Sun than is magic, though both have their place. In fact, magic and psionics can be employed together and it's explained that the sorcerer-kings owe their power and immortality to being able to wield both. "The Wanderer's Journal" suggests in various places that the relationship between magic and psionics played some sort of role in the ancient apocalypse that laid waste to Athas, thereby setting up a mystery that would be explored in later supplements and adventures.

This is where, in my opinion, Dark Sun faltered. The adventures produced for it all centered around major events within the setting, like the slave revolt that overthrows the sorcerer-king of Tyr and establishes it as a free city. Later adventures build upon these events, further changing and altering the setting as Big Things happen in accordance with a plan established by TSR. This isn't an inherently terrible way of developing a setting, though it's not my preference. However, what made it frustrating was that many of the setting's big events, like the aforementioned defeat of the sorcerer-king, are the result of actions by named NPCs, not the player characters. Furthermore, some of these events even happen in the pages of tie-in novels rather than adventures – a testament, I suppose, of just how popular and lucrative AD&D novels were in those days.

It's a pity, because Dark Sun is a genuinely imaginative and unique take on fantasy. Athas is a great setting, one with lots of possibilities for adventure, as well as a style and feel that differs from everything else that TSR was producing at the time. I was blown away by Dark Sun when I first bought it and really wanted to run a campaign with it. That never happened, for many reasons, but a big one was that I worried that TSR would, through its adventures or novels, derail whatever it was I had in mind with their event-driven releases. To be fair, the company did the same to the Forgotten Realms as well, but the Realms had the benefit of being standard fantasy and thus there was little need for any official guidance on how to use it. Athas, being new and different, would have benefited immensely from some better adventure material to aid referees looking to make use of the setting.

This is why Dark Sun will always be, for me, "the one that got away" – a fantasy setting that could have been fantastic and groundbreaking but instead never really achieved its full potential. A shame!

Mind Over Matter

From issue #165 of Dragon (January 1991):

Retrospective: The Complete Psionics Handbook

The Complete series of rules supplements for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition was, at the time of its inception at the tail end of the 1980s, a genuine innovation – supplements specifically focused on a particular character class or race and providing new ideas, rules, and options for use with them. Later, thanks in large part to White Wolf's "World of Darkness" games, this type of book would become commonplace in the hobby, but, when the Complete series first appeared, there were few prior examples of these "splatbooks," as they'd become known in the gamer argot.

Despite my TSR fanboy proclivities, I never embraced the Complete books. I liked them in principle but was never impressed with their actual content. I also recognized quite early on that their mere existence would likely place a lot of pressure on Dungeon Masters to adopt them, since many players would want access to new options for their characters. Furthermore, I anticipated an inevitable power creep in these options, as each new book in the series tried to outdo its predecessors.

Because of this, I didn't consider the Complete books must-buys and, after the first two, intended to avoid them entirely. However, early in 1991, TSR released the fifth book in the series, The Complete Psionics Handbook, and I was sufficiently intrigued that I bought it as soon as I saw a copy. Written by Steve Winter, this 128-page book presents a completely new system for introducing "extraordinary psychic powers" – psionics – into AD&D, with an eye toward making their use clearer and easier to use for both players and DMs. Psionics had been a part of Dungeons & Dragons since the publication of Eldritch Wizardry in 1976. That original version, created in part by Steve Marsh, served as the foundation upon which the AD&D Players Handbook would later build its own expanded version of psionics. Neither version was, in the opinions of many, clear or easy to use, so a revision was definitely needed.

Winter's psionics system took a lot of inspiration from the earlier versions but was nevertheless its own thing. He carried over a lot of the names and concepts found in Eldritch Wizardry and the Players Handbook, like ego whip and tower of iron will, for example, and placed them within a large, better conceived mechanical framework. One of the biggest problems with the earlier systems was that they felt very ad hoc and unbalanced. There was scarcely any attention given to how psionics would work in relation to other aspects of the AD&D rules. By contrast, these concerns seem to have been at the forefront of Winter's mind as he wrote The Complete Psionics Handbook and it shows.

First and foremost, psionics in this book are primarily the purview of a single character class: the psionicist. While it's still possible for members of other classes to possess a "wild talent," that's unusual. By taking this approach, Winter analogizes psionics with spellcasting and indeed could be said to have reimagined psionics as an alternate magic system – the points-based system that so many D&D players had been desiring almost since the game's beginning. One of the advantages of this approach is that it enabled psionicists to operate as just another character class alongside all the "standard" ones rather than being these weird – and potentially overpowered – outliers whose presence was likely to upset a campaign.

Reimagined as members of a new class, psionic characters' powers and abilities are now tied to level, just like all the classes. As a psionicist advances, he gains new psionic disciplines, devotions, sciences, and defense modes, as well as more psionic strength points (PSPs) in pretty much the same way a cleric or a magic-user gains new spells with experience. This is a simple and frankly obvious change that turns psionics into something that's workable even at low levels of play, something that was often not true in previous versions. In additional, all psionic powers are better detailed and described, giving players and DMs a better handle on what they can and cannot do within the game. It's all very well done.

At the time of its release, I had nothing but praise for The Complete Psionics Handbook. It had managed to take a strange edge case within the rules of First Edition AD&D (and OD&D before it) and convert it into a system that I could actually imagine myself using and enjoying. Not only that but I found myself actively thinking of ways I could do so. Winter's version of psionics felt fresh and fun and, above all, playable, a word I'd never have used to describe any previous version of psionics. That's no small feat and one of many reasons why I am ever more convinced that, despite the distaste many show for it in this corner of the hobby, I can't bring myself to say that Second Edition was an unmitigated disaster. If it was capable of fixing psionics, how bad could it be?

Polyhedron: Issue #27

Issue #27 of Polyhedron (January 1986) features yet another cover by Roger Raupp, this time depicting a clan of dwarves. Raupp was a very prominent artist in the pages of both Polyhedron and Dragon during the second half of the 1980s – so prominent that, for me at least, his illustrations strongly define the look of that era. I also remember Raupp's work on many of the later Avalon Hill RuneQuest books, which, as I understand it, are very well regarded among Glorantha fans. 

Leaving aside the forgettable "Notes from HQ," the issue properly kicks off with "Dominion" by Jon Pickens, which introduces a new type of spell for use by AD&D magic-users. Unlike previous collections of new spells by Pickens, this one looks not to magic items for inspiration but rather psionics. All of the dominion spells concern "controlling the victim's voluntary muscles and sensory linkages." This is not mind control but rather bodily control of another being (with the senses being considered part of the body). It's an interesting approach and ultimately, I think, a better one than AD&D's psionics system, which, in addition to being mechanically dubious, didn't really mesh with the overall feel of the game.

"The Thorinson Clan" by Skip Olsen presents five dwarves, related by blood and marriage, from his Norse mythology-inspired AD&D campaign. These are the characters Roger Raupp portrayed on the cover. They're an interesting bunch and I must confess I appreciate the fact that Olsen's campaign is multi-generational, a style of play I think is under-appreciated (and one of the reasons I think so highly of Pendragon). Almost certainly coincidentally, this issue's installment of Errol Farstad's "The Critical Hit" offers a very positive review of Pendragon, which he calls "the stuff of which legends are made." Needless to say, I agree with his assessment.

Next up is "She-Rampage" by Susan Lawson and Tom Robertson, a scenario for use with Marvel Super Heroes. As you might guess based on its title, the scenario involved She-Hulk but also a number of other female Marvel characters, like Valkyrie, Spider-Woman, Thundra, and Tigra. There's also an original character, Lucky Penny, who's based on the Polyhedron's editor, Penny Petticord. The background to the adventure is rather convoluted and involves alternate Earths where one sex dominates the others. The male-dominated Earth, Machus, has learned of the existence of our Earth and sees the existence of super-powered women as a potential threat to be eliminated. This they attempt to do by traveling to our world and then – I am not making this up – releasing doctored photos and scurrilous stories in the pages of "a girlie magazine known as Pander." Naturally, the superheroines take exception to this and it's clobberin' time. I have no words.

Michael Przytarski's "Fletcher's Corner" looks at "problem players." More specifically, he's interested in two different types of players who can cause problems for the referee. The first is the "Sierra Club Player," who's memorized all the rulebooks and uses his knowledge to overcome every obstacle the referee sets before him. The second is the "Multi-Class Player," whose experience is so wide that he tells other players the best way to play their class. In each case, Pryztarski offers some advice on how best to handle these players. Like most articles of this sort, it's hard to judge how good his advice would have been at the time, because most of what he says is now commonsense and has been for a long time. 

"Alignment Theory" by Robert B. DesJardins is yet another attempt to make sense of AD&D's alignment. Like all such attempts, it's fine to the extent that you're willing to accept its premises. DesJardins argues that "law versus chaos" is a question of politics, while "good versus evil" is a question of heart (or morality). He makes this distinction in order to fight against the supposed notion that some players believe Lawful Good is more good than Chaotic Good – in short equating "law" with "good" and "chaos" with "evil." Was this a common belief then or now? I suppose it's possible players who entered the hobby through Dungeons & Dragons might have carried with them echoes of its threefold alignment system, but, even so, how common was it? I guess I long ago tired of alignment discussion, so it's difficult for me to care much about articles like this.

This month, "Dispel Confusion" focuses solely on rules and other questions about Star Frontiers, which surprised me. Meanwhile, "Gamma Mars: The Attack" by James M. Ward offers up a dozen new mutants to be used in conjunction with the "Gamma Mars" article from last issue. Most of these mutants are mutated Earth insects, but one represents the original Martian race, whose members have been lying beneath the planet's surface in wait for the right moment to strike against human colonists to the Red Planet. I find it notable that Ward was long interested in introducing extra-terrestrial beings into his post-apocalyptic settings, whether Gamma World or Metamorphosis Alpha. I wonder why it was an idea to which he returned so often?

As you can probably tell by this post, my enthusiasm for re-reading Polyhedron is waning. I'm very close to the end of the issues I owned in my youth, so I may simply be anticipating the conclusion of this series. On the other hand, I also think there's a certain tiredness to the newszine itself. The content has never been as uniformly good as that of Dragon and it's become even more variable as it has depended more and more on submissions by RPGA members, few of which are as polished or imaginative as those to be found elsewhere. The end result is a 'zine that's sometimes a bit of a chore to read, never mind comment about intelligently. 

Ah well. I'll soldier on.

Polyhedron: Issue #25

Issue #25 of Polyhedron (September 1985) features eye-catching artwork by the Marvel Bullpen, depicting the Hulk and long-time foe, the Abomination, bursting through the cover. Both characters appear in the issue's Marvel Super Heroes article – a first for the newszine. At the time, I was quite pleased by this expansion of Polyhedron's coverage, because I was a big fan of MSH and was always on the look-out for new material (particularly write-ups of Marvel characters that hadn't yet appeared elsewhere).

Normally, "Notes from HQ" is filled with RPGA-related ephemera and thus doesn't command my attention for long. This time, though, part of it is of greater interest, specifically the call for Dungeon Masters to submit "a store, tavern, house, city block, NPC, street encounter, guild" for inclusion in a fantasy setting to be used by the RPGA as a "home base" and possible locale for adventures. Robert Asprin's Thieves' World is referenced as an inspiration and it's stated that Gary Gygax has agreed to allow this city to be placed in his World of Greyhawk setting. If any of this sounds familiar, that's because I suspect the project was eventually retooled for use with the Forgotten Realms, becoming Ravens Bluff, the Living City, an RPGA staple for years to come.

Jon Pickens offers up a second part of his "Unofficial Magic-User Spells" series, again looking to existing magic items as source of new spells (like the ring of spell turning and ring of x-ray vision). It's fine, if a bit unimaginative, though I cannot forgive the consistent misspelling of "absorption" as "absorbtion" throughout, especially when the magic item that inspired it, the rod of absorption, spells it correctly. The "RPGA Network Player and Judge Standings" is hardly worth mentioning, since it's little more than three pages' worth of names. Looking through them, I spotted the usual assortment of TSR employees and freelancers, along with a few others whose names I recognized from Dragon and elsewhere. I wonder if any readers of this blog had earned enough tournament XP to make it onto the list?

Part II of Frank Mentzer's AD&D adventure, Needle, also appears in this issue. Having found the titular needle – a magical obelisk – in Part I, the characters are now tasked with removing it for transport back to their homeland while dealing with hostile bullywugs and pirates. The adventure is quite fascinating, in that it's mostly a matter of resource management and logistics. The characters command a team of workers and mercenaries over the course of the several weeks needed to achieve their goal. How well they manage their resources, as well as how they respond to various threats, determine whether or not their mission is successful. I have no idea how it would be to play, the idea behind this scenario sounds compelling.

Michael Przytarski's "Fletcher's Corner" returns, talking about high-level adventures this time. That's a topic of great interest to me, since there aren't a lot of good examples of them in my opinion and I'd love to read some good advice on how to create my own. Sadly, there's not much meat to this article. It's mostly brief nuggets ("Try not to be bring the gods into it") intended to keep things somewhat grounded and avoiding boredom ("Three red dragons are fun, but they can become tiresome"). Perhaps the article's brevity (one page) prevents Przytarski from getting into the weeds of this topic, I don't know. Regardless, I didn't find what I was looking for here, which is a shame. My quest continues.

"Rampage" by Roger E. Moore is a straightforward Marvel Super Heroes scenario, in which four different super-strong characters – the Hulk, Hercules, the Abomination, and Titania – in the streets of New York. It's not deep, but it's fun. I also appreciate the way that Moore presents different Karma award charts for each character as a way to highlight their differences. That's something I always liked about Marvel Super Heroes and that's harder to implement in a game where the characters are all original creations of the players rather than established personalities. 

With apologies to Rembert N. Parker, I'm going to pass over his "How to Succeed at Judging an RPGA Network Event," because it's of minimal interest to me. "Dispel Confusion" consists of two full pages of AD&D questions, with no other RPGs represented. By and large, the questions this issue concern ambiguities in the rules and, as such, aren't that interesting to discuss here. The most notable question concerned psionics and its use, with the answer noting that psionics will be revised "in the future." Rounding out the issue is a positive review of Paranoia, an old fave of mine, though it's been years since I've attempted to play it. Maybe I should change that.

As always, Polyhedron is so much more of a mixed bag than is Dragon and it's frustrating. Most issues contain good material, but very few are consistently good. That probably explains why I eventually stopped reading it, while I continued with Dragon well into the 1990s. I suspect this is because Polyhedron always had a much more "amateur" quality, which limited both its audience and its submissions. It's a real pity.

Polyhedron: Issue #13

Issue #13 of Polyhedron (August 1983) is dubbed a "special issue," because, in the words of its editor, Mary Kirchoff, more "strictly gaming aid articles." What that means is that, unlike previous issues, this one includes no RPGA ephemera, only articles for use with TSR's various roleplaying games. This is precisely what I'd hoped to see in the pages of Polyhedron when I first started to subscribe to it. Alas, the 'zine would return to its earlier form with issue #14, but I nevertheless enjoyed this one, singular though it was.

The letters page contains two letters of note. One asks about the possibility of a D&D movie, while the other questions why Deities & Demigods includes "fighting abilities and statistics" for the gods described therein. Here's the response regarding a D&D movie:

The story of the D&D movie Gary Gygax was supposedly working on during his time in Hollywood is the stuff of legend. I know very little about it myself, but Jon Peterson, has written a lengthy essay about its history and development that's well worth your time. 

The Deities & Demigods question is interesting, both for the answer (provided by DDG co-author James M. Ward) and for its asker, a name that might be recognizable to those familiar with the luminaries of the OSR:

And here is Ward's answer:

This is pretty much the same logic employed by Tim Kask in the foreword to Gods, Demigods & Heroes, the predecessor to the DDG. I'm not entirely sure what to make of it, except that it suggests TSR felt a need to police the boundaries of power within D&D. What an odd thing!

"Dispel Confusion" contains the usual assortment of questions about TSR's stable of roleplaying games. Of these, one stands out as worthy of being highlighted:

One can quibble about whether these are indeed "the two most important concepts in the D&D game," but I find it difficult to disagree that both of these concepts in the answer are indeed significant ones, particularly the second one. My ongoing House of Worms campaign – which will celebrate its ninth year of continuous play in March 2024 – is largely propelled by player choice and the consequences of those choices, for example.

Mary Kirchoff provides another installment of "Under Construction," this one being something of a follow-up to the one that appeared in issue #10. Like its predecessor, it's clever and flavorful – a good example of a dungeon "special." The issue also includes a "policy statement" from the publishing division of TSR, regarding Dragon and the newly-acquired Ares:

In short, TSR decided to focus Dragon solely on fantasy RPGs, shifting science fiction RPGs over to Ares. This was a huge disappointment to me at the time, because then, as now, I prefer SF to fantasy and I had no interest in subscribing to yet another gaming magazine. Ultimately, like everything else TSR did with the former SPI's properties, this move was ill-considered and failed. In time, Ares would cease to exist as a stand-alone magazine and sci-fi content would be re-incorporated into Dragon in the form of the Ares Section, which would become one of my favorite parts of the magazine.

Roger E. Moore's "Gods, Demigods, and DMs" is yet another look at the apparently vexed question of how to handle interactions between deities and powerful player characters. Moore's advice is generally very good, relying on both mythological tales, the AD&D rules, and common sense as guides. He quite reasonably believes that the gods should not be seen as "pushovers" even by the mightiest PCs and that the DM should pull out all the stops when roleplaying gods and demigods that their awesomeness is fully manifest. As I said, he provides lots of solid advice and examples, but I still have to wonder: were battles with the gods so commonplace that TSR needed to address it again and again?

"Spelling Bee" by James M. Ward looks at just two spells: continual light and its reverse, continual darkness, in order to show how versatile and useful they can be in play. I appreciate articles like this, because I've long felt that (A)D&D has too many spells, especially when one considers how many ways even a handful of spells can be used by a clever caster. Pointing out all the ways existing spells might be employed goes some way, I think, toward alleviating the need for further, ever more specific, spells – at least that's my feeling.

"The Hive Master" by Harold Johnson is an unusual four-page adventure for use with Gangbusters. I say "unusual," because, unlike all previous scenarios written for the game, this one doesn't deal with bootlegging or bank robbery but instead with efforts by a mad scientist – Professor Abe Malefica – to get his revenge on the world who mocked him by releasing a specially-bred type of harvester bee into the world. It's pulp nonsense of the highest order and I hated it at the time. Looking at it now, though, I have a better appreciation for what Johnson was doing, even if he refers to Malefica as an "entymologist." 

The issue includes a double-sided cardstock reference sheet of Dawn Patrol rules and tables. I still have mine inside my game box to this day. "Ecosystem," another by Ward, looks at the ramifications of the environment in Gamma World on adventure scenarios. "Go West, Young Gamer" by Steve Winter suggests the inclusion of four new ability scores to Boot Hill – Coordination, Observation, Stature, and Luck – as a way to further differentiate characters in the game. Given that BH is a very primitive game in terms of mechanics, this makes some sense. Does anyone know if these were these incorporated into the third edition of the game by chance?

"Raid on Theseus" by Doug Niles is a starship combat scenario for use with Knight Hawks. Kim Mohan's "Psionic Pspells" is a lengthy (four pages) article looking at "spells resembling psionic powers" from every possible angle. These spells are enumerated in Appendix C of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, but Mohan is, for some reason, interested in explaining the logic behind each spell's inclusion in the list in order to better understand AD&D magic, psionics, and the interplay of the two. I cannot say I share his enthusiasm for the topic. "The Condor Assignment" by Allen Hammack is ostensibly a Top Secret article, but it's mostly a review of then-current espionage media, like the Bond novel, Icebreaker. 

Other than the obligatory RPGA catalog at the end, that's issue #13. Though no longer than its immediate predecessors, it certainly feels meatier to me, probably because of the lack of RPGA ephemera that didn't interest me at the time and interests me even less four decades later. This issue represents what I always wanted Polyhedron to be, but very rarely got – a pity.

White Dwarf: Issue #79

With issue #79 of White Dwarf (July 1986), I reach the penultimate issue I'll cover in this series. Though I'm glad to have done it – and I hope it's been profitable for those of you reading along – I can't deny that my enthusiasm has been waning for some time now. Sadly, this issue did little to make me regret my decision to end the series with #80, though there are a couple of bright spots – like John Blanche's cover illustration ("Amazonia Gothique"), which I like for reasons I can't fully articulate.

This issue marks the first one featuring Paul Cockburn as editor. His inaugural editorial mentions that there will be still more changes in store for the magazine, though these will "come in bit by bit." Cockburn also notes that Citadel Miniatures would, from this point on, include "a small warning, intended to prevent figures being sold to that part of the public who might actually be harmed by lead content." He elaborates that there had recently been a Citadel ad in a magazine "aimed at a very young audience," which necessitated this warning. Maybe I'm just old and contrarian, but I felt a slight pang of sadness upon reading this. By 1986, the Old Days (and Old Ways) were already fading ...

"Open Box" takes a look at two related Palladium products, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness and its post-apocalyptic supplement, After the Bomb. Both products are positively reviewed, but the reviewer, Marcus L. Rowland, expresses a preference for the "present day setting of the original game," which he feels offers "more opportunities for plot development and diversity." Also reviewed is Secret Wars II for Marvel Super Heroes, which is judged "an awful lot better than Secret Wars I." Never having seen the original, it's not clear to me whether this is faint praise or not. Two Chaosium releases, Black Sword (for Stormbringer) and Terror from the Stars (for Call of Cthulhu) get positive reviews, as does West End's Ghostbusters. Acute Paranoia, a supplement for (naturally) Paranoia earns a more middling appraisal, largely due to its "disappointing" mini-scenarios.

"Where and Back Again" by Graham Staplehurst is one of the aforementioned bright spots of this issue. Dedicated to "Starting a Middle-earth Campaign," the article lays out all the decisions a referee looking to run a RPG campaign set in Tolkien's world must make. Staplehurst covers subjects like "style" (i.e. campaign frame), rules, and even source material. He also raises the question of how closely one might wish to hew to Middle-earth as described by the good professor and the consequences for choosing to deviate from that particular vision. It's a solid, thoughtful article on a topic that has long interested – and vexed – me. 

Dave Langford's "Critical Mass" has only rarely been something I've enjoyed and this issue's installment does little to change my mind. More enjoyable (to me anyway) is his second contribution to the issue, an odd little article entitled "Play It Again, Frodo." Ostensibly, Langford's assignment is to demonstrate "how closely role-playing and literature are entwined" in order to help readers convince their "serious" friends that gaming isn't a silly hobby. He attempts to do this through a series of vignettes based around famous books or movies – Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Conan, The Lord of the Rings, etc. – where he postulates that events go other (and humorously) than how they do in the originals. The idea here is that roleplaying allows to do things "your way" rather than being bound by the dictates of an omnipotent author. 

"20-20 Vision" by Alex Stewart reviews science fiction and fantasy movies. The bulk of this issue's column is devoted to the film, Highlander, in which "a medieval Scottish warrior with a French accent" is befriended by "Sean Connery's Glaswegian conquistador." Stewart calls the movie "a stylish, raucous and utterly preposterous D&D scenario transplanted bodily into contemporary New York." That's probably the most succinct (and amusing) way I've heard Highlander described and it does a good job, I think, of capturing the essence of its cheesy glory.

"All in the Mind" by Steven Palmer offers an alternate psionics system for use for AD&D. Palmer's system interests me for its relative simplicity – the article is only four pages long, as well as for its more flavorful elements. For example, there's a discussion of the heritability of psionic powers, as well as the inherent connection between twins. Neither of these elements plays a major role in his system, but the fact that they're mentioned at all is in stark contrast to the dreary, tedious treatment of psionics in the Players Handbook. 

"Ghost Jackal Kill" by Graeme Davis is a Call of Cthulhu scenario that's presented as a prequel to The Statue of the Sorcerer, a Games Workshop CoC adventure. The scenario is set in San Francisco and involves not only the Hounds of Tindalos, one my favorite type of Mythos entities. It also features real-world historical figures, specifically the actress Theda Bara and writer Dashiell Hammett. Normally, I tend to be leery of the inclusion of such people in RPG adventures, but, in this case, I think it works, particularly Hammett, who did actually work as a detective for the Pinkertons and drew on those experiences for his fiction. In any case, it's a good, short scenario and another of the issue's stand-outs in my opinion.

"Think About It" by Phil Masters examines the purpose and use of the Intelligence score (or its equivalent) in roleplaying games. Because it's an overview of a large topic, it's necessarily brief in its examination, but it does a good job, I think, of presenting different options and approaches to handling Intelligence in RPGs. "'Eavy Metal" provides tips on converting miniature figures, along with some nice color photographs. 

"Psi-Judges" by Carl Sargent – a name that would feature prominently on the covers of many RPG products throughout the late '80s and into the 1990s – is an expansion of Judge Dredd: The Roleplaying Game focused on, of course, psi-judges. Interestingly, it's equal parts a rules expansion and a roleplaying expansion. There's information on how to play a psi-judge in the game, alongside discussions of game balance and other matters. "Gobbledigook" and "Thrud the Barbarian" are still here, but I can't deny that I miss the presence of "The Travellers." The comic's absence really hits home to me just how much White Dwarf has changed from the days when I read (and enjoyed) it regularly.

One more week!

Secrets of sha-Arthan: Adept

An adept by Zhu Bajie

Hit Dice: 1d6
Maximum Level: 14
Armor: Light or medium armor, no shields
Weapons: Any
Languages: Janeksa

An adept practices mental self-control to channel powers of the mind known as disciplines. The origin of this practice is shrouded in mystery, but it may be as ancient as the Makers themselves. Regardless of the truth, it is now widespread across sha-Arthan, particularly in those lands that were once part of the Empire of the Light of Kulvu.

Combat

An adept can use light or medium armor but does not have the training required to use heavy armor or shields. She can use any weapons.

Disciplines

An adept uses her inherent psychic ability to activate a number of disciplines individually or in combination, according to the Adept Level Progression table below. Disciplines are chosen by the player from among the following:

• Clairvoyance: An adept can see through or into opaque or solid material within 30’ for up to 1 turn per level.
• Control Self: An adept exerts psychic control of her own body for 1 turn per level, during which time she can suspend normal bodily functions (stop or slow heartbeat, respiration, etc.) without a detriment to normal physical or mental performance; gain total recall of memory; or perform minor feats of strength, agility, and/or mental prowess. The referee has final say on the effects of these feats.
• ESP: By concentrating for 1 round, an adept can perceive and understand the thoughts of living creatures within 60’ for 1 turn per level. A target detects the adept’s use of this discipline with a successful WIL check. An unwilling target may make a mental attack save to resist. While reading thoughts, the adept may move but cannot attack.
• Fear: An adept can cause a target within 120’ to flee for 1 turn per level, unless it successfully makes a mental attack save.
• Healing Trance: By meditating intensely for 1 turn, during which time she is insensate and unable even to defend herself, the adept can heal herself 1d6+1 hit points per use. At 6^th level, the trance heals 2d6+2 hit points per use. Alternately, the trance may be used to grant a +4 fortitude save bonus against one poison or disease per use.
• Illusion: An adept can create a visual illusion of her choosing so long as she concentrates. Within a range of 120’, an adept can animate an illusion within a 6’ cube +1’ per level. Targets who succeed at a mental attack save recognize the illusion for what it is. Illusory enemies have DR 10 and vanish if successfully struck. Damage dealt by such enemies is not real. A character who appears to die actually falls unconscious, a character petrified is paralyzed, and so on. Such effects last 1d4 turns.
• Mind Shield: An adept can shield her mind for 1 turn per level, granting her a +4 bonus to any saving throws against mental attacks of any kind for its duration. This discipline requires little concentration, so the adept is free to attack or use other disciplines while it is in effect.
• Mind Blast: An adept directs a blast of psychic energy at a target within 60’, dealing damage equal to 2d6 + 1 per level of the adept. A successful mental attack save halves the damage.
• Psychometry: The adept sees into the past of whatever single object she touches, understanding its function purpose, origins, and who has touched it in the last 10 years per level.
• Suggestion: An adept’s words take on a supernatural potency. Up to one HD of persons per level of the adept must make a successful mental attack save or follow her suggestion for 1 round per level of the adept. (If the suggestion would endanger a subject, that subject automatically saves). This discipline is language-dependent and may be used in conjunction with telepathy. The subject is unaware of the manipulation, but, after its duration, he realizes he has been psychically influenced. Suggestion may only be used once per turn against the same subject.
• Telekinesis: An adept can move solid objects with a remote psychic “hand.” The remote hand can be projected to a range of 20’ + 5’ per level and lasts for 3 rounds per level. The amount of weight manipulated is equal to 3 +1 per level VIG (see Encumbrance). Movement speed is 10’ per round per level.
• Telepathy: An adept can establish bidirectional mental communication with one other living intelligent creature within 90’ for 1 turn per level. Every four levels, the adept can add another such creature to her mental communication. The creature need not share a language with the adept. Communication is limited to conscious thoughts but can include visual, auditory, tactile, and olfactory components.

Frequency of Use

Twice per day per level, an adept may use any combination of the disciplines she has developed. For example, a 2nd-level adept has developed three disciplines and may use any combination of them four times per day in total. For example, the adept could use ESP and suggestion once each and telepathy twice or ESP twice and suggestion and telepathy each once, or in any other combination.

Using Disciplines

An adept must spend a round concentrating in order to activate a discipline. This precludes moving, attacking, or taking any other actions.

In combat: Like spell casting, using a discipline can be disrupted in combat (see Spell Casting). The use of mental disciplines must be declared before initiative is rolled.

The Articles of Dragon: "And Now, The Psionicist"

Psionics in AD&D is a strangely contentious topic and not just because the rules presented for it in the Players Handbook leave a lot to be desired. For many gamers, psionics belong to the realm of science fiction and are thus inappropriate to a fantasy game like Dungeons & Dragons. I can understand that point of view, but it's not one I share, since D&D is a "fantasy" game in the broadest sense, which is why it can readily incorporate "science fiction" elements without difficulty. That said, I never used psionics much back in my AD&D days nor have I attempted to add it to my Dwimmermount campaign. The reason for this has nothing to do with maintaining the "purity" of my fantasy worlds so much as the fact that, as written, the rules for psionics are a mess.

This unsuitability of the psionics rules was widely acknowledged by nearly every gamer I knew back in the day. Consequently, many of us greeted issue #78 of Dragon (October 1983) with some pleasure, as it was largely devoted to psionics and its problems. Of the articles in that issue my hands-down favorite was "And now, the psionicist" by Arthur Collins. Collins was one of those authors, like Roger E. Moore and Ed Greenwood, whose stuff was always good. He wasn't as prolific as Moore or Greenwood, but he never failed to impress me. Indeed, if I were to be completely honest, I think Arthur Collins was my favorite old school Dragon writer and "And now, the psionicist" reveals part of why I think so.

The article takes the then-bold step of introducing a new character class -- the psionicist of the title -- as a way to make the psionics rules both workable and enjoyable. More than that, though, Collins also does something even more remarkable: he makes the AD&D psionics rules intelligible. He does this through his explanation of the psionicist's class abilities, such as its acquisition of attack and defense modes and psionic disciplines. It's a small thing, really, but it had a profound effect on me as a younger person. For the first time, I began to feel as if I understood how psionics was supposed to work. Likewise, the notion of making psionics the purview of a unique class rather than an add-on to existing classes was a revelation to me. It made so much sense that I couldn't believe no one had thought of it before. (Someone had, of course -- Steve Marsh -- but their version of psionics never made it into OD&D as written).

"And now, the psionicist" is fairly typical of Collins's work. Rather than wholly rewrite AD&D, he instead clarifies and expands upon the rules as written, in the process making the original rules both understandable and stronger. It's a talent all the best Dragon writers had in those days, but Collins, in my opinion, made it into a high art. Moreso than any other writer, he showed me that, strangely organized and presented as it was, AD&D's rules weren't wholly arbitrary; indeed, they often made sense if you actually took the time to look at them objectively and think about the logic behind them. The proper attitude when encountering a rule that seems "broken" is to step back and consider it carefully before deciding to excise it from the game. That's an attitude that has stuck with me after all these years and one I continue to recommend to others.

Telekinetic Shield

Here's another illustration from Thousand Suns from the chapter on psi powers. If all goes well, the book should available for sale sometime next week.

©2010 Jacob Walker

Retrospective: Psi World

I have a very strange relationship with roleplaying game published by FGU. I rarely actually played them -- and when I did, I generally found them far less satisfying than I had hoped they would be -- but I was always interested in them. I'm not entirely sure I can explain why. Were I to guess, I'd say it was because FGU games always gave the impression of being "serious." By that I only mean that they knew what they were about and made no excuses. They didn't pander to the lowest common denominator and they certainly didn't try to appeal to kids. When I first entered the hobby, such things were important to me, however superficial they might appear in retrospect.

A good case in point is Psi World, which came out in 1984. Subtitled the "Role Playing Game of Psionic Powers," Psi World was written by Del and Cheron Carr and "takes place in our world, the Earth, in the not too distant future." It postulates that sometime in the next 10 to 50 years, a minority of the world's population manifests psionic abilities and whose existence has thrown society into turmoil. The game assumes either that the psionically gifted are hated and oppressed by the government or that the psionically gifted are attempting to use their powers to manipulate society to their own ends -- or something in between.

The game thus seems to have been intended as a platform for exploring a number of social and political issues -- exactly the kind of "serious" subject matter I associated with FGU back in those days. Of course, Psi World contains next to no guidance to the referee on how to use these issues to generate adventures. The bulk of the game's short rulebook is devoted character generation, combat, and psionics. Its world building chapter is a joke, devoting the bulk of its scant pages to sample prices for goods and services. The sample adventure included in the boxed set does little to rectify this oversight, concentrating as it does on fairly low-key events that don't provide much more meat for the referee (or players) to chew on.

Needless to say, this was a huge disappointment to me. I very much like the idea of a game focusing not just on psionic powers but on the various "What if?" scenarios that might arise in the face of their appearance. Unfortunately, Psi World isn't that game. Instead, it's a pretty bland skill-based FGU game that offers little that I couldn't cobble together myself from games I already own. That was even the case in 1984, when I was a lot less experienced at kit-bashing rules and there were a lot fewer rulesets from which to choose. Looking back, I find myself wondering why Psi World was published, since it offers very little that's original or distinctive. Even its psionics rules, which ought to be the game's crown jewels, aren't particularly noteworthy, which may be Psi World's greatest disappointment.

American Gothic

Reader Ronald Copley pointed me toward an old post over at Yog-Sothoth, where you can download a PDF copy of the original manuscript pages of the RPG, American Gothic, typed up by Steve Marsh. American Gothic is of interest, because it is, in the words of Sandy Petersen, "the alpha version" of Call of Cthulhu, one of the classics of our hobby.

According to Sandy Petersen:

Steve is an old friend of mine, and he did in fact help germinate the American Gothic idea (the name was his idea, for instance). Another pal of mine, Marc Hutchison, was involved from the start. Steve wrote up a treatment basing it largely on D&D...

The PDF document, which you can download here, is short but fascinating, particularly since it was written in May 1977 and uses OD&D/Chainmail terminology in places (such as the fighting capability of the "Mycenean Thought Crafters" class). Reading through it, you can see a number of things that call to mind the lost version of psionics that Steve Marsh created that was later reworked for inclusion into Eldritch Wizardry. It's well worth taking a look at this if you have any interest in the development of the games and ideas of the hobby.

Seeking Suggestions

What would be a good term to describe the scientific study of psi powers in a slightly retro sci-fi setting where those who possess such powers are called "espers?" I like the term "parapsychology," but, alas, it's been hijacked by those who study a wide variety of occult phenomena, so I need something different and preferably Campbellian (as in John W.).

OD&D Psionic Limitations

In Eldritch Wizardry, not every character may possess psionic ability. It's started early on that "All player-characters with psionic ability ... must be of human origin." Interestingly, in the AD&D Players Handbook, it's stated that dwarves and halflings may "possibly" have psionics. In both cases, though, elves are seemingly excluded from being psionic (or "psychic," as Supplement III calls characters with psionic ability). Personally, I like the limitation of psionics to only certain races, although I'd probably vary which races can be psychic from campaign to campaign.

It's also noted (in bold text, no less) that

Monks & Druids do not have psychic potential, they are therefore prohibited from becoming psychics.

Again, I can see limiting psionics to certain classes but a universal prohibition does raise questions. For example, of all the classes available in OD&D, the monk strikes me as the one that's most compatible with the notion of psionics. Indeed, many of the class's abilities strike me as conceivably psionic in nature. So why the prohibition? And why are druids unable to be psionic while clerics can? It's an oddly specific ruling. No mention is made of paladins (who, presumably, count as fighting men) or assassins, nor of classes from The Strategic Review, even though rangers at least are referenced elsewhere in Eldritch Wizardry.

Needless to say, OD&D psionics are a lot more "quirky" than even their AD&D counterparts, which is saying something. Right now, I'm trying to figure out if there's any discernible logic behind these quirks or if they're just things that are. Regardless, I'm having a lot of fun plowing through this stuff.

Open Friday: Psionics Use

As some correctly guessed, I wanted to ask about psionics this Friday.

This is a question for people who actually liked and used psionics in their D&D campaigns, not those who didn't use them, didn't like them, or thought they had no place in a fantasy setting: did you use the psionics rules as written (either in Supplement III or the PHB) or did you modify/house rule them or use a variant of them from some other source?

The psionics rules are notoriously difficult to get a handle on, after all, and, when I used them back in the day, I know I wasn't using them "as intended." I'm wondering how common my experience was and it's that that I'd like to hear about today.

Gygax on "Psionics"

It's pretty well known among old school gamers that Gary Gygax long regretted the inclusion of psionics in AD&D. As I recall, he was considering dropping it entirely from his never-realized Second Edition of the game. Consequently, when he created his Dangerous Journeys multi-genre RPG, Gygax opposed "magickal casting," which were powered by Heka and "psychogenic powers," which were fueled by Vril and noted that users of one who traveled to a universe where the other held sway would find their native abilities translated to the appropriate type. There's some food for thought there.

More amusingly, though, is this passage in Mythus Magick, where Gygax discusses psionics:

The term "Psionics" should be followed by "(sic)" in most works dealing with roleplaying game rules, for it is typically misused. (A good indicator of how well the authors have researched their work, and how little the publisher knows about it, too!). Psionics means "electronically enhanced psychic, or psychogenic, ability." It is as simple as that.

As it turns out, Gary was correct on the term "psionics," the coinage often being attributed to the famed science fiction pioneer John W. Campbell and meaning just what Gygax says it does. However, this passage makes me laugh because, of course, D&D probably played as big a role in spreading this misuse as anything else (first appearing in a book Gygax co-write and being adopted in another for which he has the sole byline). It's also funny because Mythus Magick was published by GDW, a company whose own signature game line, Traveller, though based on classic sci-fi, nevertheless uses "psionics" to mean psychic powers.

OD&D Psionic Balance

One of the commoner complaints about psionics is that there's no balancing mechanism in the rules. That is, characters with psionics are simply better than those without. In Eldritch Wizardry, that's not actually true, because the text notes that, depending on one's class, there's a price to be paid for acquiring psionic ability.

Fighting men:

for every ability they gain they must lose the service of 1 of their followers, and for every four abilities gained 1 point of strength is permanently lost.

Magic-Users:

for with each psionic ability gained the magic-user will lose the ability to remember a spell. That is, with gaining of the first ability the magic-user will be able to use one less 1st level spell, when the second ability is gained he will lose two additional spell levels (i.e. two 1st level spells or one 2nd level spell), and so on. At no time may the magic-user remember more high level spells than low level ones, and if he is able to use 6th level spells, for example, and he selects one, he must be able to remember at least one spell of each of the other five levels.

Clerics:

for every psionic ability gained the cleric will lose two of his other advantages. First, he will lose one spell, exactly the same as a magic-user loses spell ability. Second, the cleric loses the ability to turn away undead monsters as he gains psionic powers, so that for each psionic ability gained the cleric ranks a level lower in the ability to turn undead. Thus, a 10th level cleric with four psionic abilities would have a loss of 10 spell levels and turn undead as a 6tyh level cleric.

Thieves:

In addition to the penalties noted for fighting men, however, thieves also lose 1 point of dexterity for each four psionic abilities gained.

Say what you will about the efficacy of these proposed balancing factors but they're actually quite interesting. For example, psionic ability would seem to be at odds with magic, since an increase in psionic potency is met with a concomitant decrease in magical potency. Psionic ability also somehow weakens the physical body, as evidenced by the loss of Strength and Dexterity by fighting men and thieves (There's also the implication that thieves are a sub-class of fighters but that's a different topic). Finally, there's the decrease in a cleric's ability to turn the undead the more psionically powerfully he becomes. What's up with that?

Again, I'm not certain that these penalties for possessing psionics make up for the benefits gained, but there's no question that they're very suggestive about the metaphysics behind psionics. With the exception of the undead aspect, there's even a certain logic to it all (and there may even be with the undead, though I haven't yet figured it out). Any new psionics system would be wise, I think, to look to Supplement III for inspiration, even if using different details. I like psionics to feel odd and alien and somehow contrary to the ordinary rules of the D&D world. That's part of what makes them compelling to me and why I think they deserve their own mechanics, distinct from those of spellcasting.

Thinking 'bout Psionics

This post over at Huge Ruined Piled has got me thinking about psionics again. Or rather it's intensified my latest bout of thinking about psionics. I make no secret of the fact that I've always loved psionics in D&D. I know all the arguments against them, the only truly cogent one being that the old school implementation of them, whether in Eldritch Wizardry or AD&D, never really worked, but I've never understood the notion that psionics "don't fit" D&D. I mean, I can understand not using psionics in every D&D campaign, but I'd argue that the list of things that genuinely "don't fit" D&D in any absolute sense is vanishingly small.

My own renewed interest in psionics is twofold. First, ever since my stillborn attempt to produce an old school psionics system for use with the retro-clones, I've thought that I ought to revisit the topic from a slightly different angle. Second, without revealing too much to my players, I think there's definitely a place for psionics in my Dwimmermount campaign. Indeed, over the last few sessions, I've found myself thinking that I really need to come up with a psionics system that "feels right," so that I won't miss the opportunity to introduce it into the campaign when the moment arises.

So far, though, I don't have any new insights into the topic and so I'm left more or less where I was last time. I remain committed to using Eldritch Wizardry's system as a starting point, because, to me anyway, that funky system has a great deal of flavor that I want to preserve. Figuring out a way to preserve that flavor and create something that's, well, actually playable and isn't a bookkeeping nightmare. Beyond that, I am not yet sure how to proceed, but it's something I am cogitating upon a lot these days, so don't be surprised if you see a bunch of psionics posts here over the next couple of weeks.

REVIEW: Old-School Psionics

Old-School Psionics by Charles Rice is an optional supplement for OSRIC that presents a psionics system for use with that game. Unlike OSRIC itself, which hews as closely to its AD&D inspirations as possible within the restrictions of the Open Game License and copyright law, Old-School Psionics is a fresh take on its subject matter, a "what if" product in the words of its author. Consequently, the system it presents, while having some elements in common with its 1e predecessor, is largely an original creation. That's frankly a wise decision, as AD&D's psionics, like those in OD&D's Eldritch Wizardry, are an unholy mess that no one I've ever met could use without significant house ruling.

Unlike AD&D psionics, which was intended primarily as an adjunct to the existing class system, Rice instead presents psionics as the domain of a new character class called the mentalist. There are provisions for "wild talents," which is to say, psionic members of other classes but they're supposed to be exceedingly rare and their aptitude with psychic abilities is decidedly lesser. Again, this is a good decision and reminds me of the psionicist class created by Arthur Collins and appearing in issue 78 of Dragon, one of my favorite articles from the magazine back in the day and one I used extensively as the basis for a psionics-based AD&D campaign.

Where Collins's class was tied into the existing AD&D psionics system (albeit with modifications), Rice's mentalist is its own creature, being somewhat like an illusionist who wields psychic abilities instead of spells. These abilities are divided into four disciplines, with the mentalist acquiring greater access to them as he advances in levels. Psychic abilities are cast not from slots but through the expenditure of psionic strength points, the mentalist's pool of which increases with level. The class also gains a few other level-dependent abilities, such as crafting psychic items and traveling to the astral and other planes. As with the previously-reviewed alchemist class, I would quibble with any level-based ability being placed at 20th level, which makes it even less likely to be obtained than mighty spells such as wish, but that may be a matter of taste.

Each of the psionic disciplines has seven levels of abilities, with 3 or 4 such abilities per level. The result is a very tight collection of powers rather than the usual cornucopia I associate with AD&D spells. In this respect, the abilities more closely resemble AD&D psionic powers and their fewer number helps lend a different flavor to them compared to standard magic. They likewise seem to be well matched against magic, being somewhat more potent individually but balanced by the fact that they can be used more rarely, given the number of psionic strength points needed to do so.

Old-School Psionics also includes a number of psionic monsters, many of them old favorites, such as the aboleth, brain mole, and intellect devourer, as well as "new" ones that reinvent D&D favorites that WotC did not include in the D20 SRD. These are all nicely presented and tie into the new psionics system so that they can be used to their full potential. Rounding out the 22-page PDF is an overview of the Nexus Campaign, an extraplanar setting based around the city of Nexus where one can find portals to infinite worlds and whose governance is in the tentacles of the mysterious Unseen Masters, an ancient psionic race.

Retailing for $3.00, Old-School Psionics is well worth picking up, if only for inspiration in constructing one's own psionics system for AD&D, OSRIC, or another retro-clone. The system Rice presents is easy to use and flavorful, feeling sufficiently different from "ordinary" magic that including it in one's campaign would bring something genuinely new to it. That said, I was disappointed that Old-School Psionics does not include a psionic combat system, which was the part of AD&D's psionics rules that were perhaps the most unintelligible -- and the ones I most wanted to find some way to use. As someone who attempted to make sense of it myself, I am deeply sympathetic to Rice's decision to avoid it, but I nevertheless had hoped that a product calling itself Old-School Psionics would have included it. Secondly, unless I somehow missed it (which is possible), there is no discussion of how psionic strength points are regained after being used by a mentalist.

In the end, though, these are quibbles. Old-School Psionics is a solid product and one I'm glad to own. It's a good example of the kind of mechanical material I'd like to see more of: presenting simple but still flavorful rules for subjects that aren't covered in existing retro-clones and simulacra. Here's hoping we'll see a future expansion that tackles psionic combat.

Presentation: 7 out of 10
Creativity: 8 out of 10
Utility: 6 out of 10

Get This If: You're looking for a straightforward way to add psionic abilities to your D&D game.
Don't Get This If: You somehow understand the original AD&D psionics rules or don't think mental powers belong in a fantasy game.

S&W Psionics, Part II

Here's the section on psionic combat I promised. I'm a bit ambivalent about it, as it stands now, so I'd appreciate criticism that would improve it. I want it to remain fairly simple to use and I want to keep psionics as a side show by default, meaning that it never overshadows either melee or magic. Ideally, though, it should be easily changed to work as a substitute for magic in certain kinds of settings, so keep that in mind too.

I'm also toying with changing the number of power points available by level, since, as written now, psionic combat would be difficult for low-level characters to engage in for very long. That's by design, but I do worry it might be too hard as written. Once again, comments and suggestions are welcomed and encouraged.

The material in the quote box below is hereby designated Open Game Content via the Open Game License.

Psionic Combat

In addition to employing psionic powers (see below), psionic creatures can also engage in psionic combat with one another through the use of psionic attack and defense modes. Psionic combat functions similarly to melee and missile combat, with an attack roll made against a target's psionic armor class (PAC). If successful, attacks deal damage that reduce the target's current psionic power points, just as melee and missile attacks reduce the target's hit points. If psionic power points are reduced to zero, the psionic creature may no longer use psionic attack/defense modes or psionic powers. Such defenseless psionic creatures are even more susceptible to psionic attacks than are non-psionic creatures, as noted below.

Psionic Attack and Defense

All creatures, psionic and non-psionic alike, have a base psionic armor classs of 9. The creature's Wisdom bonus (if any) affects the PAC. Psionic attacks are treated as if made by a first-level character, meaning that a roll of 10 or more on 1D20 is necessary to succeed against PAC 9, adjusted by the character's Intelligence modifier (if any). A character's Charisma modifier may apply either to PAC or the attack roll, at the discretion of the player. The modifier may be shifted between the two on a combat-by-combat basis, but not within a single combat.

Like melee and missile combat, creatures engaged in psionic combat must select “weapons” and “armor” for the occasion. Each round, players must choose an attack mode and/or a defense mode from among those available to their characters, provided they can pay the power point cost for using them. Power points are expended before the attack or defense is used, regardless of whether they prove successful. However, once activated, they may be maintained without any cost for the duration of the psionic combat. Activating a different attack or defense mode, however, requires the expenditure of power points, as does re-activating modes formerly maintained.

Some attacks are more effective against certain defenses than are others. The following chart shows the bonus or penalty to the psionic combat attack roll.

	Empty Mind	Intellect Fortress	Mental Barrier	Thought Shield	Tower of Iron Will
Mind Thrust	-3	6	1	4	5
Ego Whip	1	-2	-1	-3	3
Id Insinuation	-2	1	-4	-1	0
Psychic Crush	-5	4	3	2	-3
Mind Blast	3	0	-3	-2	-1

All psionic attack modes suffer a -8 attack penalty against non-psionic creatures, except for mind blast, which gains a +4 bonus. Conversely, all attack modes gain a +8 attack bonus against psionic creatures who no longer possess any power points.

Attack and Defense Modes

Unless otherwise stated, all attack and defense modes affect only a single creature at a time. Likewise, a psionic creature can always raise a defense mode as a reaction in response to a psionic attack mode, even if he or she has already acted in the round, unless the creature no longer possesses any power points. Such a reaction requires the expenditure of power points, as usual, however.

Ego Whip

Attack Mode

Range: 8ft

Duration: Immediate

Power Point Cost: 3

An ego whip targets the “I” or self and, overwhelming it with negative or vicious feelings that inhibit its ability to function properly. As such, this attack mode is only usable against a sentient being. A successful use of an ego whip deals 1d6 points of power point damage to a psionic target, while non-psionic creatures are stunned for 1d4 rounds.

Empty Mind

Defense Mode

Range: Self

Duration: Immediate

Power Point Cost: 1

This defense mode induces a low-level meditative trance in which the mind of the creature using it becomes less distinct from the world around it.

Id Insinuation

Attack Mode

Range: 120ft

Duration: Immediate

Power Point Cost: 3

Id insinuation attacks a target's basest instincts, freeing them temporarily from the control of his or her higher psyche in order to induce confusion. A successful use of this attack mode deals 1d8 points of power point damage to a psionic creature, while non-psionic creatures are stunned for 1d6 rounds.

Intellect Fortress

Defense Mode

Range: Self

Duration: Immediate

Power Point Cost: 5

This defense mode summons the strength of the higher psyche to create a powerful bulwark against psychic attack.

Mental Barrier

Defense Mode

Range: Self

Duration: Immediate

Power Point Cost: 3

This defense mode draws on innocuous, repetitive thoughts to shield the mind against unwanted intrusions.

Mind Blast

Attack Mode

Range: 40ft.

Duration: Immediate

Power Point Cost: 9

This attack mode blasts the minds of all creatures in a 40-foot cone with mental energy, dealing 1D12 points of power point damage to a psionic creature. A non-psionic creature is more susceptible to mind blast than to other psionic attack modes. On a failed saving throw, a non-psionic creature is stunned for 3d4 rounds.

Mind Thrust

Attack Mode

Range: 60ft

Duration: Immediate

Power Point Cost: 1

This attack mode shapes mental energy into a “psychic blade” with which to “stab” the mind of the target. This deals 1d4 points of power point damage to a psionic creature, while non-psionic creatures are stunned for 1 round.

Psychic Crush

Attack Mode

Range: 25ft.

Duration: Immediate

Power Point Cost: 5

This attack mode uses neural impulses to assault the target's mind, thereby rendering mental activity more difficult. A successful attack deals 1D10 points of power point damage to a psionic creature, while a non-psionic creature is stunned for 2d4 rounds.

Thought Shield

Defense Mode

Range: Self

Duration: Immediate

Power Point Cost: 1

This defense uses ephemeral, surface thoughts to protect the mind from attack.

Tower of Iron Will

Defense Mode

Range: Self

Duration: Immediate

Power Point Cost: 5

This defense mode harnesses a creature's determination and mental resilience to fashion a psychic barrier so powerful that it can protect other creatures, psionic or not, within a 10-foot radius around the user, who gain the full benefits of this defense mode as if they were using it themselves.